PerreaultForever

I suspect he chose the team he thought had the better chance of making the playoffs. Check one more box on the crazy Yzerplan.

I think that when you say "most people" you mean Sabres fans with a bias. There are people here who pronounce prospects as stars long before they earn it. I don't buy in to that until I see it on NHL ice. Spinning this into me saying Quinn is some sort of a bust is simply a twist on my words. We were speaking in hypotheticals about how to evaluate the success of analytics in drafts. I merely said at this point he doesn't look like the best choice. After the injury he might come back and show that he is the right choice. But assuming it's a fact before it happens is just wrong. Because of the injury I even give him an extra year before that pronouncement. But it's all hypothetical at this point.

Bigger issue. As I said before we played them you beat them with speed and forecheck. We didn't do that so we lost bad but that's the formula. They have a big D and a solid D that boxes out well and keeps the game to the perimeter when the opposition is slow and/or soft but if you attack that D with force and speed it falls apart and falls apart badly. Then they don't control or drive the play and the offense isn't good enough (aside from Pasternak) to function well without the defensive support. It's a fatal flaw and any night any team exploits it they are in trouble. I'm not sure they have a solution either. I don't think so. It's quite hilarious since they brought him in to be a veteran leader and mentor for Bedard and all their kids. Guess it's all on Foligno now.

FFS what part of the word "maybe" do you not understand? For the umpteenth time I said "so far" and "time will tell". This kind of selective critique is what makes the internet a bag of s%%t.

Wild gonna get scrappy now with Hynes taking over. I forgot all about him. He might be a good fit for them.

AHL don't mean squat, that's pretty much the point. Rossi is on pace to put up more points than Quinn did for us last year so I put him ahead. For the moment.

As I said, "remains to be seen" because of his stupid off season injury. The other guys are all currently contributing to their team's success so FOR NOW they are ahead. We shall see how it ends up when Quinn actually returns. Given the injury probably can't make a definitive on this for another year after that as well.

Well go figure. Bizarro world. Not to take anything away from the Sabres, who played so much better than the previous game and several players had an outstanding night, but that wasn't the same Rangers as I watched beat the Bruins. Now the Bruins are in a funk/slump so maybe they also made the Rangers look better but they were definitely not playing as well as they can. But UPL obviously had one of his good nights. Very good in fact and if he played like that consistently we'd have no goalie issue at all would we. I know Kyle scored late but Tuch once again showed me why he should be captain next year. Maximum elevation/leading by example after a team horrible game. That to me is strong leadership. Peterka continues his break out season. Not unexpected. Top line was good. Big Johnson (and his bad analytics) was very good. More leadership. You have to like what we saw. They were pretty good and did a lot of things that they don't usually do right. Although he didn't impact the score, I do really like the tenacity and energy that Benson brings every night. All too often there are Sabres who lack that tenacious spirit and he seems to have it in spades. This is often the missing ingredient on this team. We have the skill, we have the speed, but we lack the intensity/desire/tenaciousness you need to forecheck, create turnovers and finish plays. Hopefully this attitude holds and rubs off on some of the others so that we start to see it EVERY night. As a whole, I should probably stop commenting on individual games on a regular basis cause this team is impossible to predict or figure out from one night to the next.

I think the only question in this game is who will Trouba run over or elbow in the head and not get suspended for.

There were a lot of picks, so there are a lot of prospects, but so far how good they are remains to be determined. imo there is only one way to evaluate success in drafting and that is to wait 3-4 years and then go back and look at the whole draft. Is your guy better than the next 10-20 picks made? If he is, they got it right, if he isn't they blew it. It's all relative to the entire draft pool. Peterka looks like a win. Quinn remains to be seen but at the moment we might have blown that one. Rossi, Perfetti, Mercer, Schneider, maybe Quinn comes back from injury and is better than all of them but right now no. In the case of Rosen, Wyatt Johnson would have been a win. Time will tell if Rosen is a complete fail or not. I'm not saying you have to get every single thing right, but in overall terms you have to do better than the opposition and better than the average odds if you want to claim your analytics get the job done. Personally I still think you need the Rick Dudley type to point to guys and say "this guy's got it, that guy doesn't" and then you can run the analytics and if it meshes up that's your guy for sure. As far as I know, there is no analytic for character/attitude.

Unless the Rags show up hung over and half asleep (from celebrating all weekend after taking over first place from the Bruins) Sabres have virtually no chance. None.

The Sabres are supposed to be relying heavily on analytics. How's that working out? I have no issue with the use of advanced analytics. You use every piece of information you have and you look at everything available. This is just common sense. I only have an issue with using them in isolation from the eye test, experience, and character. If I'm the coach following that New Jersey debacle, I'm not looking over the advanced stats today, I've got the entire team doing wind sprints until some of them start to puke. Close the country club doors until these guys learn a proper work ethic. After that, we can start digging deeper into the nuances of the analytics.

A good part of this I wouldn't argue with but your comment about an "elite defender" isn't really true. It's a team game and elite players can only do so much on their own. If they are surrounded by stiffs their stats will still suck. What also has to be considered is who is Granato putting out there against who? I don't have those stats but is EJ being put out in more situations where Granato feels he needs a better defender? Is he up against the top forwards? I don't think anybody would argue that EJ is no longer a top D man but he wasn't brought in to be a top D man. He was brought in to be a veteran mentor and bottom pairing guy, an upgrade on Stillman/Bryson. No more, no less. Bottom line, EJ is not the reason this team is losing or why they looked so pathetic against New Jersey. Not by a longshot.

Looking at so called advanced stats without considering what's actually going on in the game is stupid stuff that should be reserved for bored children and shut ins who spend too much of their lives on computers and nobody else. Simple example. Face off in your own end. Team puts player on ice because they consider him a better defender. Team loses face off. Opposition controls and moves puck around perimeter and after some time bangs in a rebound. Said player now has bad metrics. On ice for goal against. Team did not possess puck while he was on. Danger chance not prevented. Blah blah blah. It's the team's fault, but when computer nerd looks at stats he or she goes oh man, what lousy advanced stats. This guy sucks. and all you had to do was win said face off and all those metrics change. (Now the computer nerds can proceed to tell me how I don't understand advanced metrics because I didn't give enough long winded explanations and illustrations and they will think they are smart because I'm lazy and annoyed and just pissed off with this stupid f'n hockey team. Have at it. idc)

I have had the thought for some time that the philosophy has been "I have all this draft capital so we will increase our odds and if we draft 3-4 of these guys we are almost guaranteed one home run". In any event there are too many the same and even if a few of these guys turn out okay the same holes will still be there on the roster.

Well at least he's not going on IR.

They have not had a decent goalie since Ullmark left and they have botched or passed on any opportunity to solve that. I mean come on, the team was celebrating Craig Anderson as if it was some sort of big deal. I got nothing against him and he even seems like a nice guy, but he was a well past his prime has been whose best days were over a decade earlier. He'd been bounced around and waived by others if I remember correctly. Wasn't he 4th string in Washington? Anyway, they signed him and then re-signed him as if it was an accomplishment. It's just absurd how they've mishandled the singularly most important position on the roster.

Montour is a perfect case in point. You see Montour's a wanderer. But he is aggressive and attacks the goal. Adds a lot to their offense. The difference though is they have a system and a forward covers for him when he takes off. Our forwards, very often, don't do squat.

Oh okay, but how so? My understanding is players are making more take home money there than in a lot of other states and definitely more than in Canada (which is where people were suggesting he'd end up after this year).

I'm confused. You say it's a debunked myth and then you say he gets away with a lot which argues against the debunking. I just know what I saw and the Rags were favoured in that game. I'm not blaming them for the loss, Rags were better than the Bruins by far, but the refs called it pretty one sided all the same and that Trouba play wasn't even a minor.

Our D sucks, no question. As does the goaltending on many occasions. For years now people have argued about it, and which D is the worst and who has to go and some of them do go (and often play just fine on other teams) but just once, I'd like to see the discussion of what the forwards do NOT do which is the biggest factor in all of this. Every single D man who comes here plays worse than they did on their previous team. Advance stat that.

Why would he leave Florida? He's doing well there and no tax. He's not going anywhere. Didn't even get a penalty and then the Bruins got a high stick call minutes later for next to nothing. Refs love the Rags. League loves the Rags. It's not surprising at all.

ex-Sabres can't fight any better than Sabres. https://www.hockeyfights.com/fights/n268132 Probably shouldn't have cut the hair.

answer - cause he's not even close to being ready. As we saw.

I'm not sure I care. I'm definitely done doing this. I mean what difference does it make. 8 first rounders in the line up from the last few years, you think 9 will make a difference? I don't give a flying F who they draft next year.